


water into blood

by redbatman



Series: season 12 [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: All I'm Getting From You Is Colours, Angel True Forms, Angelic Grace, Castiel-centric, Dissociation, Episode: s12e15 Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell, Grace Sharing, M/M, Vessels, Wavelength of Celestial Intent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 15:01:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10281677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbatman/pseuds/redbatman
Summary: “You don’t trust me, not completely,” he says, holding up one hand when Castiel opens his mouth to respond. “That’s not a criticism. It’s smart. You shouldn’t give away your faith for free.”Castiel huffs an amused breath. “There’s an irony there,” he says. “In human terms, I think. The idea of angels withholding faith.”“You should know better than anyone,” Kelvin says, smiling warmly. “You are the holy crusader of angelic free will, after all.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is not exactly a coda but a timestamp for 12.15. i thought kelvin and castiel had like buckets of chemistry you guys i was like leaning gradually more and more forward in my seat the more they talked. title is from.....well, the biblical plagues of egypt.

Castiel keeps gripping the glass of water with both palms, his long fingers splayed outwards. Kelvin’s words play in his head like one of those tapes that gets stuck in Dean’s car, only Castiel doesn’t know how he can pop out his thoughts and rewind the delicate film like Dean always does, get the thin spool running again the way it’s supposed to, the way it was designed to.

_ But it’s not home, is it? _

Sometimes he misses his short time as a mortal being, though painful and unnatural it was to be robbed of his Grace and pushed out of Heaven like a baby bird with clipped wings being pushed from its nest. Castiel almost relished the pain of it. For a brief time, he was able to convince himself that Heaven was behind him, that he had no choice but to make Earth the only place that cradled his soul. Even the suffering, the starvation, the homelessness, made him feel  _ human.  _ It felt like a Rite. It felt cleansing, like penance.  


Jimmy hasn’t been in this body with him for years. It’s his. He’s the only one who feels here, thinks here, lives here. Sometimes he feels so attuned to every detail around him that it makes him feel so connected, so alive. Then, at those times, this body, this flesh, can almost make him feel the way his true form feels. Endless. Strong, not in the sense of dominant force, but in the sense of foundation. His roots buried deep in the ground and feeling the connectedness of all things, the dependency of all life on other life. He becomes aware of the burning desire of all life, sentient and non-sentient, to find a place in the world, to carve out a home, to serve a purpose. He knows that life is always exactly where it needs to be. Creatures swirl around the Earth, pulling together and apart in tandem and synchronization, dependent on each other, every single thing connected.  


Sometimes though, he just feels like he’s separated from the Earth by a layer of cotton. He can feel too much, every molecule, every atom. He can taste the dust in the air, see the pollution in the air. Right now, he feels overly aware. His hands on the glass, he still feels the microscopic space between his skin and the surface. He can see the mild impurities swirling translucent and filmy in the glass, dancing in the spaces between the bubbles which stand out. The glass has been washed recently, when he took a sip initially he tasted a mouthful of dish soap. He hasn’t done anything but cradle it since.  


He can’t help but be painfully aware that he is inhuman, at times like these. He feels like he floats away from this body, disconnects from his hands, looks at them like they don’t belong to him, feels like he’s possessing them, hijacking them, borrowing them. He’s not sure how he can make this body feel like a permanent home. How do you lay out the welcome mat, hang up the decorations, get cozy in your own skin?  


Kelvin interrupts his introspection, voice suddenly sounding loud and close, breaking through the fishbowl glass wall Castiel has been sinking into in his own mind. “Do you want to get out of here? Talk some more?”  


“Yes,” Castiel’s voice is soft, small and he pushes against the ringing in his brain to raise it. “Yes,” he repeats. “I’ve rented a room at the local motel, if that’s all right with you.”  


Kelvin is looking at him again in that inscrutable way, eyes full of unfathomable intrigue. “That’s good with me,” he tosses back the reply easily, almost lazily.  


They drive up to Castiel’s door. Castiel unlocks it, leaning down to carefully take off his shoes before going to sit heavily on the bed. Kelvin takes off his coat slowly, one shoulder at a time, slipping it off his back and hanging it on the doorknob. He kicks his shoes off and stands, looking at Castiel.  


“You don’t trust me, not completely,” he says, holding up one hand when Castiel opens his mouth to respond. “That’s not a criticism. It’s smart. You shouldn’t give away your faith for free.”  


Castiel huffs an amused breath. “There’s an irony there,” he says. “In human terms, I think. The idea of angels withholding faith.”  


“You should know better than anyone,” Kelvin says, smiling warmly. “You are the holy crusader of angelic free will, after all.”  


Castiel just huffs another breath in response, glancing down at his hands.  


For the first time, Kelvin sounds tentative. “Do you regret it?” he asks.  


“No,” he responds, simple and true. “Not free will. Never. I regret the Leviathan. I regret the Fall. But I never regret that.”  


Kelvin sits next to him. “Remember when we met, after Egypt?”  


“Yes,” Castiel says, turning his body towards him. “I remember.”  


“It’s strange to think about what my body has done,” he says. “This body-in a sense it was in Egypt too. This man-” he runs his hands along his arms. “Was born in the twentieth century. Faithful man. Took good care of his mother, good care of his sister and his nephew. Never killed. Never even thought of killing, or harming. But his blood is the same as the blood that ran in my veins when we passed over doors marked with lamb’s blood to strike down the first born. When I made livestock sicken and die under my touch.”  


“I don’t remember Egypt,” Castiel confesses. “Not our actions, I mean. But I remember the way the sky looked the day after it was all over.”  


The motel fan hums in the silence, making it untrue. That’s another thing Castiel cannot get used to on Earth-the lack of pure silence. On this planet there is no true lack of sound, the ground continues to shift beneath people’s feet, creatures continue to move, air swirls in currents, slicing through the atmosphere and dancing through bodies.  


Castiel misses gliding through the dark silence of space, stretching out all of his wings in every which way to feel the gravitational pull and orbit of the celestial bodies which longed to drag him close. He’s visited the dark edge of the universe and seen the end of everything, ever-expanding and getting further away from the centre.  


Space isn’t black, it’s darker than that. All sound is swallowed in the emptiness.  


“You found me in Heaven,” he speaks again. “After.”  


Kelvin’s eyes shine with emotion. “You’d made yourself so small,” he says. “Pulled your form in so tight and dimmed your Grace so much I could barely feel you in the wavelength. But I still could. And I didn’t know you but I knew you were in pain, so I sang for you. And you sang back.”  


“I don’t think I ever thanked you,” Castiel says. “Thank you.”  


“You don’t need to thank me,” he replies. “I....view empathy as part of my role, as a warrior. We have to be there for each other.”  


“Refreshing opinion,” Castiel raises an eyebrow. “The Heaven I’ve known lately has not seen things that way.”  


Kelvin grins at him. “Maybe you’ll find that not all opinion in Heaven is dictated by an archaic nucleus of power.”  


“Maybe I will,” he deadpans back, face blank.  


“Would you-” Kelvin begins, and stops himself.  


“What?” Castiel asks.  


“I didn’t just sing for you in Egypt,” Kelvin says, eyes searching his face.  


“Oh,” the back of his head tingles. “Yes.”  


“Yes?” Kelvin repeats back, looking up from under his eyelashes.  


“Yes,” Castiel says, surely, and raises a hand, palm outward.  


Kelvin fits his hand against Castiel’s, matching together the lower edge of their palms where hand meets wrist. Kelvin’s vessel is a tall man, well-built, but his large hands still don’t match the size and length of the hands that Castiel inherited from Jimmy. Kelvin flexes his fingers and Castiel matches the movement.  


“You know,” Kelvin says. “When you asked if I was here for your hands, I know you didn’t mean it literally,” he’s looking at the bigger, broader palm, the thicker fingers, the final knuckles that could almost bend over his own. “But these are lovely hands.”  


Castiel stares at him. “Thank you,” he slides his hand across skin, slotting his fingers in the spaces between Kelvin’s fingers. He rubs his thumb on the back of Kelvin’s hand.  


There on a ratty motel bedspread, Kelvin is full of light, like an aura around his body, a soft blue glow like a cheap fluorescent sign. The light is, of course, brightest from his eyes, the windows to the soul. There’s a slight but noticeable corona of brilliance stretching like an arc above his head. In the blue, trails of gold dance like lines of sand being manipulated by the wind in the desert. He is incandescent and his hand thrums with the pulse of his Grace, bleeding through the connection between them. It makes Castiel feel like every point of feeling in his body is lit up by the Glory. He feels warm. He feels alive. He feels like his soul, the presence and power of it, is barely contained by this skin and bone construction. The body is like a craft, a boat to access an ocean of celestial intent. The body is dancing on the head of a pin.  


He takes a deep breath, opens up the connection and their Grace connects.  


Their bodies are still in the motel room but the other parts of them, the parts that make them, are dancing between dimensions. All Castiel sees is colour, indescribable and ever changing. There’s sound everywhere, a song that can’t be heard by human ears. It’s both of their wavelengths, ebbing and flowing, humming high and low as they interact with each other. It’s not a harmonious sound, on the contrary the sections and rhythms clash together. It’s dissonant and powerful and complex as everything swirls together, the colour just as much a part of the sound as the sound is a part of the colour. It’s a conversation. They’re learning each other.  


There’s one last note of sound and he comes back to the body. He’s slightly startled to notice there are tears streaming down his face.  


They separate their hands. There’s an undercurrent of warmth in his skin like there are power lines in his body, circulating electricity through his veins. Kelvin looks at him, appraising. “No one has touched your soul in a long time have they?” he says. It isn’t really a question. He knows.  


Castiel shakes his head. “No. The last time...was with Uriel, in Heaven.”  


“Uriel is-” Kelvin begins.  


“Yes, he’s dead,” he interrupts flatly, not letting him pose the unspoken question.  


“I’m sorry,” Kelvin looks sincere. Castiel likes him. Really wants to be able to trust him.  


There are many people though, that have looked sincere.  


“That boy,” he continues. “What about him?”  


Castiel doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about. He knows his Grace sings about Dean loud enough for anyone to hear and see how he feels, what they’ve been through together. “We-” he sighs. “I don’t know if I could, with him. Let him feel my soul. He won’t-he has to let me in. Has to give it. He can’t be afraid.”  


“Does he know?” Kelvin asks.  


“I can’t push him I-” he breaks off. “I can’t risk scaring him away. I can’t risk it.”  


Kelvin hums in acknowledgement.  


“I don’t trust Heaven, you know,” Castiel says. “For the sake of my life, I’ve had to learn that it is something I can no longer do. But I’m allowing this. Because I want to have faith.”  


“Do you trust me?” Kelvin asks.  


“I’d like to,” he replies. “I wish I could. I like you though. I think I like you a lot.”  


“I think I like you too, Castiel,” Kelvin grins, eyes sparkling.  


* * *

Castiel calls Dean from the playground.  


“Cas, what’s up?” he hears Dean’s metal-dimmed voice in his ear. God, he loves that name. He loves the voice that says that name.  


“Hey,” he says, trying to keep his tone even. “I think I have a lead on Kelly Klein.”  


“Let us know if you find anything,” he can register the way the phone slightly distorts Dean’s voice, making it not quite right, not quite true.  


For a moment he comes close to telling him.  


“Of course,” Castiel answers. He hangs up, clutching the phone in front of him. He feels ashamed.  


“You ready brother?” Kelvin asks him, hands in his pockets. He’s smiling again. Castiel gets the feeling he smiles a lot, more than most angels.  


He takes a deep breath and pockets the phone inside his coat.  


Castiel goes as a guest to Heaven.  


**Author's Note:**

> ah this was fun. first castiel pov thing ! i really love writing for him and writing his thoughts was fun and rewarding. also i super hope we get to see lots more of kelvin, though that might make my characterization fail to stand the test of time lol, since we just met him. 
> 
> standard tumblr mention is DIFFERENT since i changed my url to gaydean. wow. shocking stuff. the author notes box is being shaken up.


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